In the network configuration and management realm, various protocols and command sets have been developed to set up and operate networks of machines, such as servers or other machines. The use of the Secure Shell (SSH) platform has, for example, become known for the remote configuration of individual servers and other machines deployed on public or private networks.
Remote configuration platforms such as SSH, however, were not designed and do not operate with the full range of remote system management functions in mind. SSH itself generally involves encrypted exchanges over a secure channel from one computer to another, typically to permit an administrator or user of a first machine to tunnel into a second machine. The second machine can then be remotely configured or provisioned, for example to load desired software applications onto the remote, second machine.
This type of remote one-to-one provisioning, however, does not contemplate larger network management issues, such as taking a hardware inventory of an array of machines on a network, purging obsolete files form file servers on a network, or performing any number of other higher-order systems management tasks. As a result, systems administrators using SSH or similar command protocols may be forced to custom-write various routines to attempt to automatically or sequentially perform a range of network administration tasks across entire collections of machines. The amount and complexity of the hand-written code based on SSH or similar protocols necessary to manage a large-scale network, for instance on the order of thousands of servers, can become cumbersome. Even when customized command modules can be written for an SSH-based or similar network having a large number of machines, that code must then be tested and validated for its intended purposes on the network, which may also be a time-intensive task and which may require significant debugging efforts.
It may be desirable to provide methods and systems for the remote configuration of networked systems using a secure modular platform that can provide a compact, reliable interface to invoke both pre-configured command modules and user-customized command functions on a large-scale basis with reduced development overhead.